What's New with SketchUp Pro [in] 2019?

Well, it has been quite a year (plus a little) here at SketchUp HQ, with tremendous amounts of coffee consumed. Today we’re finally ready to spill what we’ve been working so hard to finish. There’s quite a lot to share, so bear with us.

The whole team has been grinding (coffee beans and otherwise) to bring you this newest development in the life of our products. Today, we’re proud to announce a brand new way to buy all the products you love: a SketchUp subscription. The best value we’ve ever offered, now you can choose the perfect combination of SketchUp for your project, workflow, or creative concept.

Best of all: we’re using this opportunity to challenge ourselves to earn your business every single day by constantly improving the tools you need and love throughout each year.

Take a look at the new ways to buy SketchUp, and all the perks included in each subscription tier. We have been working to bring you subscriptions for years because we believe this is the best way to deliver more value to our users in a single package. This shift in our business will make it easier for new users to buy SketchUp. Current users who switch will have access to even more SketchUp products and will never have to think about keeping them up-to-date. If you’re subscribed to SketchUp, you’re running the latest version of everything.

If you've purchased a perpetual (now called "Classic") license in the past, you're still able to upgrade your Maintenance & Support to the new version. You can also choose to buy a perpetual license OR a subscription - the choice is yours.

This shift in our business will keep us accountable to retain your business, by releasing new features as often as possible. We are proud to take on this challenge and move our process from an annual update cycle to a “features-when-we’ve-got-em” cycle.

Speaking of features, we didn’t forget to give our products love this year! We’ve made SketchUp faster and more powerful than ever before with bug fixes, system improvements, and some shiny new features. There’s a lot we are proud of this year — including a way to buy the SketchUp you know and love — and so much more.

Here are a few of the highlights:

SketchUp Pro 2019 for Desktop

Sign in, and get modeling! Everything you do in the SketchUp-iverse is now tied together with one single account to make modeling, viewing, account management [and beyond!] a seamless process.

Welcome to SketchUp Pro 2019

An update to organize your recent files: right in your Welcome Window.

Brand-spankin’ new for 2019, SketchUp Pro & LayOut: Layers now have dashed lines. A long requested feature, dashed lines allow you to simplify your drawings with effective drawing communication. Take a deep dive into the new feature.

Sneak Peek of Dashed Lines in SketchUp Pro 2019

The Tape Measure tool got a facelift this year, too. Now you can see measurement info right where you’re modeling. Model more accurately — and more efficiently — right where you’re working.

Say hello to Marc, our SketchUp Pro 2019 Scale Figure.

LayOut

New for 2019, LayOut will let you know which files are already open so you’re not creating multiple versions. Looks like someone’s projects just got a little bit smarter.

Also, in both SketchUp and LayOut we have made a boatload of improvements to our .dwg import and export feature. Including but not limited to support for AutoCAD 2018 file format, increased precision, and stability while minimizing data loss. We added the ability to import and export with materials for better BIM interoperability and workflows.

The handshake between SketchUp and LayOut has improved by creating an “Export for SketchUp” feature for our .dwg exporter that sends all LayOut entities along with any SketchUp viewport data to the model space. Now any filled shape created in LayOut will be passed over to SketchUp as face ready to be Push/Pull’d. So now, SketchUp & LayOut work even better together.

Your new BIM BFF, Trimble Connect welcomes you to your new world of efficient workflows & cloud collaboration. Our 3D modeling sharing and document management tool, Trimble Connect is specifically focused on projects related to building design and construction. That’s right, it’s made just for you. Bonus: as a SketchUp (Shop, Pro, Studio or Enterprise) subscriber, you get unlimited (that’s right unlimited) storage space.

Get to know Trimble Connect.

Now, you can use Trimble Connect to back-up, control versions, and share your SketchUp files. This also means you can effectively work between desktop and web.

SketchUp for Web

Our online modeler evolves in a slightly different way than our desktop app. Since its debut, we’ve been adding capabilities that bring even more SketchUp to the web, and also allow us to try some new things with SketchUp as a web app. If you haven’t been paying attention, here’s what’s new in our Web app…

For all SketchUp users, we’ve added a ‘live preview’ for image exports. Sign-in to SketchUp for Web, open a model and go to File > Export > PNG. Now, orient or recompose your model as you like to take a snapshot at your desired image size/aspect ratio. Use this image export with scenes to dial-in a composition that helps you convey important info in your models.

For SketchUp subscribers (and Schools) users, we’ve been continually fleshing out the capability of our web application. Most significantly, we’ve added style editing -- a longtime favorite -- as a feature included in our Shop, Pro and Studio subscriptions.

Export anything you create... right from SketchUp for Web!

SketchUp Viewer for AR/VR

SketchUp Viewer is now available on more Virtual Reality headsets than ever before! And, you have access to every single one with a SketchUp Pro subscription. Oculus, Windows Mixed Reality, VIVE, and Hololens are all running SketchUp Viewer. So step into your alternate reality, and experience your project in real-world scale, right where it’s going to be built.

Better than textbooks: our official learning hub is here. SketchUp-built courses, all created by our in-house team, make learning SketchUp convenient and simple in 104 languages. And we’re always making more!

Learning components in SketchUp Campus

Learning components in SketchUp Campus

Campus explores inference locking - and beyond!

SketchUp Campus Move

A full course on all the essentials you can take in your PJ's? Yes please!

With millions of models and 17 languages, it’s not always easy to find exactly what you’re looking for on 3D Warehouse. That’s why we created categories. This update boasts better browsing, search refinement, subcategories, and filtering by real products. This year, 3D Warehouse enables you to spend less time searching and more time creating.

A little preview of how Categories on 3D Warehouse is going to make your workflow way more efficient!

Are you working in a firm that has a focus on performance-based design? We like your style. Now you can get Sefaira as a subscription through SketchUp Studio. Read all about it here, and contact sales when you’re ready to learn if Sefaira is right for you.

Building performance analysis at your fingertips with Sefaira in SketchUp Studio.

We’re the folks who work on SketchUp, so we spend most of our time thinking about how to make drawing in 3D better. We also enjoy nerf gun wars, disc golf, board games, coffee, beer, donuts, and looking at mountains. A few of us eat quinoa.